Wait and See, Watch and Follow -- Step 7

Step 7:  Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.

Koan: Let’s wait and see.

This month’s koan is an exception to what I normally present here, that is, traditional koans from the Chinese masters. I do this every so often, but not deliberately; words come to me as a koan, as something to work with my everyday life.

I’ve had a cough since last December. Still have it. This is not normal, so I contacted my doctor, who has prescribed various tests over the past three or four months. What I know today is that I do not have any suspicious mass in my lungs.  A good thing.  But each test seems to point to something else that needs looking into, thus another test.  Tomorrow it will be an ultrasound of my abdomen.

Back to this koan and the latter part of last month, I attended a 7-day sesshin with CityZen (Santa Rosa, CA). I went into the retreat with really not knowing what was going on inside my body.  A CT scan was scheduled 2 days after the retreat.

Human nature as it is, my first thought was, “I have cancer, I’m going to die, why is this happening to me?”  A millisecond later a voice in my head said, “Why not me? What makes me so special to think I should somehow avoid things like this?” Actually I felt a sense of relief, bringing me back to the present.

On the first day of the sesshin when meeting with my teacher, I told her that she probably wouldn’t be seeing me for interviews during the week.  I explained a little what was going on and that my plan was to just sit with my condition. I told her a few koans and phrases had already appeared to me, Not knowing is most intimate and Sickness and medicine correspond to each other.

It was mostly the not knowing that I sat with for 6 days, putting aside thoughts about my health conditions, especially the what ifs and my future when they came up; and relax into a wait and see mode.  This month’s koan had just entered my world.

Entering the sesshin already acknowledging “why not me” freed up any worry about death.  Death is big in Zen; a gimme; no one escapes it. O.K. that’s settled, right now I’m sitting with being alive.

I trust in what happens in sesshin. Things are revealed when they’re revealed. This sesshin was no exception. Relief and answers came from many sources, all seemed to reinforce that I have a good life today, no matter what happens in the future! Simply amazing, all I did was sit and wait and see.  Examples:

·      The great Way is by nature calm and large hearted, not easy, not difficult…Accept your nature, accord with the Way and stroll at ease, free from annoyance. Reading from our Sutra Book, “Relying on Mind” by Seng-t’san.

·      Out of the blue, the Practice Leader would give us short messages of support.  Sometimes I go about pitying myself – and all the while a great wind is carrying me across the sky, or

·      Be patient …what you are looking for is looking for you.

·      Over and over again. Around and around. Up and back down. Sit in the bottom of the bowl, head in your hands, cry, moan, feel sorry for yourself.  Or. Look around. See your fellow bugs. Walk around. Say, “Hey, how you doin’? Say, Nice Bowl! “  From a poem, Bugs in a Bowl by David Budbill.

One afternoon, in all its richness, The St. Francis Prayer came to mind.

How often have we said as a matter of passing, “The fog lifted around 2PM?” At sesshin, over a two hour period, I watched the fog lifting.  The fog and I were both lifting.

And more.  I left this sesshin feeling alive and ready for anything that comes my way.

And what does this have to do with Step Seven?

Everything.

First and foremost, we try to remain humble.  Humble people don’t try to force the issue.  Humble people don’t know the outcome or when it will happen. Humble people are patient…and willing to wait and notice what the Universe has in store for them.

Dale said, "The state of humility is being teachable and not trying to manage things...and it also has a relationship to gratitude." Elsie said, "Being humble is being truthful.  I'm aware of my shortcomings and accept that I'm not perfect



Upon asking my Higher Power to remove my shortcomings, how do I prepare myself for God’s answer? It’s not like I can kick back on the couch and simply wait for a response.  “I never just sit and do nothing while waiting for Him to tell me what to do. Rather, I do whatever is in front of me to be done…” (Big Book, Page 420), I wait while being mindful of what’s happening around me, all the while attending to the moment.

And what will clear the way to realizing my prayer has been answered? By attending to my H.O.W. (Honesty, Open-mindedness, and Willingness).

After working with this month's koan, Dale has inserted it into his morning ritual:

Each day it seems I start upon a path,
Each moment a vigilant step,
Each breath points the way.
Wait and see, watch and follow
Each moment, each breath, each day.




Bill K.

P.S. A brief update on my health condition.  No red flags! I've had two kinds of CT scans and an ultrasound since the retreat. I have a hemangioma in my liver which we'll look at again in six months.
The other internal body parts look pretty good for an old guy.  Still trying to figure out what's causing my cough.  In the mean time, I'm feeling well and enjoying life.

July Koan

We'll be meeting in about two weeks.  Here is what we'll be sitting with in July:

Step 7:  Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.

Koan: Let’s wait and see.

Bill K.

Step 6, Near at hand ...

 
Step 6:  Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.


Koan: “Coming and going we are never astray.”

From the Heart Sutra

• In Step 2 we came to believe.  This would be like sitting in a new and different car, looking around, then realizing where the gear selector is.

• In Step 3 “we made a decision. In taking this new car out for a spin, we release the brake.

• In Step 6, we’re entirely ready to go and put the car into DRIVE.

Isn’t our readiness for Step 6 totally contingent upon working the first five Steps? Every so often I hear about our AA toolbox at meetings, meaning the 12 Steps are our tools for success.  Being at Step 6 now, we have at least some experience with these first five.  Our toolbox isn’t fully stocked so we have to use what we have in order to go on. What we have is adequate.

Not only do we have these five new tools, we are realizing that they are available to us no matter where we are or what we’re going through.  I still, in all these years, forget this.  Mired in what to do, back and forth conversations with myself, angst as a result of my own actions, then it will dawn on me, “I forgot my Higher Power today!” There’s a tool in my toolbox that I forgot was there – it’s Step 6.

Recently I read about the new U.S. computer called Summit, now the speediest computer in the world.  It can do mathematical calculations at the rate of 200 hundred quadrillion per second, or 200 petaflops.


    .001
________    = RSN (Really Small Number)

 200 Petaflops


The point I’m trying to make is … I may have wandered off the path; but I’m never astray from my HP… Step 6 is always near at hand.  How near at hand?

Closer than RSN.


Bill K.

Step 6 Koan

Step 6:  Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

Koan: “Coming and going we are never astray.”
From the Heart Sutra

- - - -

Here is what we will be sitting with in June.

Bill K.

Step 5 -- The Whole World is Medicine

Step 5:  Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

Koan:  Yun Men, teaching the community, said, “Sickness and medicine correspond* to each other: the whole world is medicine, what are you?”

*Various translations: “Correspond to, subdue, heal or in accord with each other…”

Our friend Dale is in the hospital again.  But the good news is,  he’s supposed to come home tomorrow! So far he’s had a stent put in at his heart, another stent at his gallbladder to go around gallstones. There probably will be other surgeries in the near future.  And all throughout this hospital stay, he has been sitting with this koan. He has a good story for us:

Lying quietly in bed, his eyes gently closed, he was saying this koan to himself.  “Sickness and medicine correspond to each other…the whole world is medicine… what are you?”

Immediately after he had said the phrase, “what are you?” he was startled,  hearing a loud voice, “You are one sick person!” It was one of his doctors, the one who will be putting two more stents into his left leg later on. There was Dale's answer.

Dale laughed…and had to tell the doctor what had just happened.  Yes, right now he is sick and he is open to all the medicine they offer.


My sitting with this koan and Step began with what appeared as various opposites:  Sickness - medicine, ourselves - another human being, sponsee – sponsor … then eventually took me to an entirely different place.

My sickness, of course, would be my alcoholism and resulting behavior. The medicine I have learned (and through experience) is the sharing with another human being.  The effectiveness of this medicine comes from being completely honest with my sponsor and myself. So right now, my whole world is Step Five.

Elsie commented that she can’t be cured of alcoholism, but can find a modicum of peace and serenity.  “When I balk at a Step or with problems," she said, “I become sicker.”

Oh,  the perceived barriers I have heard over these years, real and imagined. To the sponsee, Step 5 can feel sickening…while the sponsor sees the “medicinal” qualities of this Step in the form of changes before his/her eyes.  But not always; there are those who refuse to do Step 5 – their alcoholic sickness festers with many returning to drinking in an attempt to forget or cover up these wounds.

Initially the medicine may seem worse than the sickness for a sponsee; but their trust in their Higher Power (and sponsor) carries them on, the necessity to tell the sponsor everything about their past.  To not reveal all,  to leave certain things out, is like not following through with a doctor’s prescription, as in,  “If one pill in 4 hours is prescribed, then two will be even better!” Too much medicine leads to more sickness.

There is no light without the dark; there is no medicine without sickness. If the whole world is medicine, then the whole world must also be sickness.  The world is sickness AND medicine.


Now, where do I fit in here?  What are you?  I’m just an alcoholic trying to find sobriety and get well.  The object then is to do right things to maintain recovery momentum.


Am I feeding my sickness?  Am I looking at ways to find relief from my sickness?  Am I the medicine that puts my sickness into remission?

Deep in my disease, not only am I sick, I’m spreading sickness.  Deep into Steps 4 and 5 I’m turning things around. Not only do I admit that I’m sick, now I’m doing something about it –
more than taking my medicine, I become the medicine for myself and eventually for others.

Elsie said, “I’m sick -- is my first thought.” It’s in the 5th Step that I found forgiveness, understanding, peace and courage to go on.

That sounds like medicine to me.

Bill K.

May koan and Step

Hello All:

It's almost May.  Time to begin sitting with our next Step and koan.  Locally we'll be meeting Friday, on May 11th.

Bill K.


Step 5:  Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.



Koan:  Yun Men, teaching the community, said, “Sickness and medicine correspond* to each other: the whole world is medicine, what are you?”


*Various translations: “Correspond to, subdue, heal or in accord with each other…”

Step 4 and Making yourself beautiful.

Step 4:  Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

Koan: For whom do you bathe and make yourself beautiful?
Dongshan (807-869)



Dongshan and Linji lived around the same time during the latter part of the Tang Dynasty, a time when Chán flourished. Dongshan is considered the founder of the Caodong School (that became the Soto School in Japan) and Linji the founder of the Linji School (Rinzai School in Japan).

Buddhism in China had its rough times, too.  The first large-scale purge of Buddhism took place in 446 “and major imperially sanctioned persecutions took place again in 574 and 842-845.” Dongshan had experienced the worst of times and the best of times for Chán when he gave us this koan.

My friend Dan Kaplan sent me one of his recent talks at the Rockridge Zendo that was on this koan. Then, with a little inquiry, I came across Sensei Megan Rundel’s blog piece on it, too.  Megan writes, “For whom do you feel desire, and how do you make yourself desirable? There is a strong sense of eros here.” While Dan said, “I take it to be about what do you truly love, what gets you out of bed in the morning. In the end, for me, it’s about ME, and that vastness that IS me.”

“I think it’s both,” I wrote back.

In asking the question: “For whom do you bathe and make yourself beautiful?“, the desire comes in many layers.  At one level it’s the bathing as a desire to please another.  At another level, in the context of what we are doing here, the Third Tradition comes to mind, “The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking.”

Step 4 is about coming clean, with ourselves and our past behavior; bathing in a tub of willingness; washing with a soap of honesty; and scrubbing where there’s the most dirt and grime.

·      For whom are you taking this inventory?
·      For whom are you coming clean?
·      For whom do you wish to present yourself today?
·      For whom are you getting sober for?

Jump into the tub! Step Four, a spiritual scrubbing, an awakening to our new self.

Others this evening:

It’s my soul enjoying the physical body – not only ego – but a process of freeing and connecting to eventually take that fearless and thorough moral inventory.  Roger.

A light is shown when taking a fearless and thorough moral inventory; it’s a sacred act to make ourselves shiny and new; where a new life begins for us each day.  Susan.

Such a simple sounding koan, I smiled.  It provoked my ability to see myself in fleeting ways.  After many years in the program, my favorite word in Step 4 has become “ourselves”. That’s what we end up with the more we work Step 4 – we end up with our self, in whatever way it presents itself in this moment.  Elsie.

Our koan and Step 4 threw a larger loop around Kate’s experience tonight.  She said she just returned to college and is taking a class in Privilege. “This Step and koan are taking me on a whole different level; where I’m asking myself not about my past behavior, but instead, where is my place in life today around privilege? What a fantastic question she asks?

Here is the full verse Dongshan wrote:

For whom do you bathe and make yourself beautiful?
The cry of the cuckoo is calling you home;
hundreds of flowers fall, yet her voice isn’t stilled;
even deep in jumbled mountains, it’s calling clearly.

Who is calling you to get sober?  Who is calling you to stay sober?

Bill K.